Scales of War

Immediately after the party covered their boots in bug guts, they here the shouts of guards below them. Several come up to their level using the levitation lift, many more surround them from the four towers. The party decides to surrender before all of the guards even finish arriving.

As they’re being rounded up, a portal on the south wall opens, and two Shadar-kai walk through. One is bound and beaten; obviously a prisoner of the other. The other identifies himself as Sarshan. After receiving reports on the party’s activities both in the tower and in the foundry. Sarshan is both thankful (for killing Modra and stopping the sabotage effort), and annoyed (for killing his men in the tower). He decides to offer the PCs positions within his organization. He explains that events will soon unfold which will make the mortal world a place where they will not want to live, and that his organization is positioned well to profit.

The PCs begin stalling for a miracle, and try to bluff their way out of the situation. Sarshan sees through their lies. Fortunately, the miracle comes. A large tremor hits and passes. A minute later though, explosions erupt from the foundry. Chaos around the camps ensues. Sarshan begins ordering the guards around, giving them all tasks to control the situation and leave his guard captain to kill the PCs and lock up the shadar-kai prisoner.

Obviously, his mistake was in thinking that the party would be easy enough to kill. The party didn’t have a chance to rest and regain their healing since the last encounter. However, they had help in this battle. During the conversation with Sarshan, the prisoner managed to escape from his ropes. He picked up his weapon, a spiked chain, which Sarshan had dropped, and joined the battle.

Once the bad guy was dead, the shadar-kai chainfighter explained that the portal leads back to the black shrine, and the rift to the mortal world. They all head back to the caverns under the Happy beggar. However, before they make it to safety…

A tremor causes the shadow rift to expel 6 specters. They follow the party through the portal to the mortal world. The specters traveling through causes the rift to be destoyed. The black mists within the Shadowfell gate are torn apart, the six specters seeming to absorb the darkness as it fades away. With a combined burst of psychic energy, the specters attack the party and badly hurt many in the party. The single attack drops Tier into a pile of bugs (all stuck on their backs). The rest of the party manages to quickly kill them the specters though.

In the aftermath of the final battle against the power of the Shadowfell, the PCs can take a well-deserved rest. The noise of the battle is heard in the Happy Beggar, with Prashant and Ausma discovering the secret cellar and the route the PCs took into the caverns below. They arrive just as the PCs are cleaning up and are astounded to discover what lies beneath their establishment.

The paladins take care of contacting the Overlook authorities. While they wait for the city guard to arrive, the PCs can confirm that the Shadowfell gate has been permanently destroyed. Sarshan’s route into Overlook has been shut down for good.

With their religious background, Ausma and Prashant can give the PCs more information on the white shrine, since they recognize it as a place of ancient demon worship. They conclude that the dark power that created the specters has festered within both sides of the Shadowfell archway all this time—a potentially grave danger to Overlook that the PCs have eliminated. The teleportation portal is still operational, but it can be shut down by representatives of the Council.

The discovery and destruction of the Shadowfell gate makes the PCs heroes in Overlook, especially when Sarshan’s connection to the recent orc raid is revealed. The shadar-kai’s warehouses will be raided, but in the aftermath of Modra’s treachery, Sarshan has been careful to clean up any evidence of his recent activities. Though his operations are shut down for good, no further information on the shadar-kai’s presence in Overlook can be found.

The PCs have plenty of time to rest up and plan their subsequent moves. Little do they know, however, that their notoriety will take an unexpectedly dark turn in the next adventure._

Not dead yet. There’s still hope that we can at least eliminate Sarshan. I’m still looking for some way to shut down the whole operation, but for now, I’m hoping that at least cutting off the army’s head, we’ll end this army as a threat.

The party enters a secret tunnel which leads to the tower. The tunnel leads to another secret door which opens into a library. While the shadar-kai occupants are not surprised by the secret door opening, they are shocked to see the party enter. With the party winning initiative they quickly attack first. The shadar-kai seem to be much more challenging opponents than the Dark Ones have been.

After slaying the poor helpless knowledge seekers in the library, they find a laboratory to the north and follow a stairwell heading up. Upstairs they find a garden within the tower; infested with bugs. Swarms attack them when they enter. A battle of bug swarms ensued, as the swarm druid fought them well.

OUCH!!!!! Me got hurt something fierce…reminded me of me first days as a gladiator…me no like that…anyway, we wound up going into some forge where some big two headed pig and me fought a lot…me gets the feeling that Pretty Lady is not happy about something…me dunno what it is, but me definetly can tell something is not right…anyway, me still having fun in this place…lots of fighting, which me always love, and training…me not so sure me will ever want to leave…but me don’t want to leave all me friends either…oh well, me will decide when it is time…for now me having fun…

Now I know we’re going to die. I’ve been resigned to that since we entered this camp. But we’ve at least avenged Modra’s crimes. Of course, he may have been the best way to stop Sarshan, and we’ve actually made things worse. Somehow I’ve managed to talk everyone into going after Sarshan (I’m beginning to worry that the halfling isn’t herself), and even if we succeed in defeating the fiend, we won’t make it out of this camp. But since we don’t have any other way of making it out, we might as well take some of them down with us. I’m sorry my friends for leading you to your deaths, and I hope that at least we’ll have quick deaths.

The party received a tip on where Modra would be. He had plans at the Dark Foundry, where there is supposedly a secret tunnel which connects the foundry and the Tower. The party discovered a crack in the wall in the foundry, where the could enter unannounced. Upon entering the foundry, they found Modra and his minions working to sabotage the foundry, along with the remains of the foundry guards. The party attacked, and Modra released one of the monstrous creation of the foundry; a huge two-headed boar. After a long fight, the Misfits survived and slayed Modra and his crew.

Umbraforge is disgusting. A wreched place filled to the brim with the the foulest creatures one could ever imagine. Mercenaries and drones working together in hopes of receiving scraps form the table of someone named Sarshan who is lord of this domain. We came here in pursuit of Modra, who was apparently working outside of Sarshan’s scope when he supplied the Orc army with overstock weapons from Sarshan’s stockpile.

While trying to gather more information about Sarshan and what he intends to do with such a large mercenary force when a band of ogres decided to test their metal against us…they lost. We were unable to find out exactly what Sarshan’s intentions are before being attacked by the ogres, and after such an encounter the opinion has been conveyed that it may be a good idea to go back to town and alert the authorities. It may be wise to let them know what is going on before any large scale attacks come about, however I feel that we might have a better chance of discovering the true intentions of Sarshan if we continue on our own a bit longer. We don’t even know if Sarshan is the mind behind the madness or if he’s working for someone else. I think we should press forward.